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shminux comments on [LINK] Analysis of why excluding hostile people is worth it - Less Wrong
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I wonder how to detect and exorcise one's inner asshole. Or whether this is even an instrumentally useful thing to do.
It's a project I'm at work on. (It turns out that knowing your flaws doesn't fix them.) I'm not as much of an asshole as I have been previously. I have actually recognised and successfully suppressed the urge on occasion! This is vast progress.
Do you mean the part of your mind that is habitually hostile even if it isn't expressed? Something else?
For me it's when my literary impulse overcomes my awareness of how to work productively with others.
The Star Trek episode "The Enemy Within" gave a plausible answer to this, which gibes with my experience. To really get things done, you need assholes, and you need to be somewhat of an asshole. The meek, non-asshole "Good Kirk" was too weak to lead, while the psychopathic asshole "Bad Kirk" was too aggressive. But the idea that assholes should be exorcised from communities because, for example, they make women run away is just not a persuasive argument. Study the history of great minds and men (yes, almost all men) and you will find assholes everywhere. This is an aspect of our modern culture that I profoundly despise and disagree with: the hostility to conflict and abrasive people. It seems to me to be essentially a celebration of mediocrity. High functioning assholes are the intellectual equivalents of lions hunting infirm gazelles; rather than exorcise them, perhaps we need more of them to prevent mediocrity, stagnation and groupthink.
We might be using different definitions. It's OK to break a few eggs to make an omelette, it's not OK to break a few eggs just for the fun of breaking eggs. I'm pretty sure it's the second kind of people that is usually termed an asshole.
Yes, I think definitions (and understandings) need to be made more explicit.
People who break eggs for the fun of breaking eggs are usually called something along the lines of sadists and psychopaths.
In the context I would assume an "asshole" is someone who just wants X done and does not care at all about your feelings, opinions, convenience, etc. Example one: a recruit training sergeant. Example two: Steve Jobs.
An alternative definition would be "someone who wants to play power and status games" and that's a different case.
An yet another alternative definition is "someone who's more ambitious/aggressive than me".
Right, good classification. From the slides:
Seems like your second definition, "someone who wants to play power and status games" is the closest.
It made me think of your inner asshole from slide one. By all means, try to do it. try this: http://1000awesomethings.com/ Try anything.
Exorcising, as in preventing it from taking control whenever it feels like? Sounds good. Unwise to eradicate it, though.